Ralph Matthew Leck. Vita Sexualis: Karl Ulrichs and the Origins of Sexual Science. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016. 304 pp. $60.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-252-04000-9. Reviewed by Harry Oosterhuis (Maastricht University) Published on H-Ideas (November, 2018) Commissioned by Eliah Bures Politics and the Study of Sexual Science? An Exchange Between Harry Oosterhuis and Ralph Leck Editor’s note: The following exchange was ini‐ tiated by Harry Oosterhuis, who was asked to re‐ view Ralph Leck’s Vita Sexualis for H-Ideas. After reading the book, Oosterhuis believed that a longer review was called for, one that could rebut central claims put forward in Vita Sexualis and address fundamental issues about the role of presentist political concerns in writing the history of sexual science. Professor Oosterhuis proposed that the author be given the chance to respond formally, and Ralph Leck graciously accepted the offer. The following is their exchange. ______________________________________________ The Pitfalls of Political Correctness in Writ‐ ing Sexual History Harry Oosterhuis (Maastricht University) Ralph Leck’s book about the historical origins of "modernist" sexual science and the related ideal of a liberated "vital sexualis" has a neatly ar‐ ranged plot. There is the pioneering hero men‐ tioned in the book’s title, the German lawyer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-95), who was the first pub‐ lic advocate of equal rights, not only for "urnings," or homosexuals, but also for other minorities whose gender identity or sexual preference did not conform to the established heterosexual and H-Net Reviews reproductive norm. Then there are a number of ing of such rights with human and civil rights; and German and British disciples of Leck’s idol who the replacement of the procreative norm with the bravely continued his rebellion against the op‐ free expression of consensual sexual pleasure. pressive legacy of Christian doctrines, Victorian This agenda was inspired by an empathic and prudery, and bourgeois hypocrisy: Karl Maria compassionate attitude that was rooted in the per‐ Kertbeny, Johanna Elberskirchen, Magnus sonal experiences of its main proponents, most of Hirschfeld, Iwan Bloch, Auguste Forel, Ferdinand whom—Ulrichs, Symonds, Carpenter, Hirschfeld, Karsch-Haack, John Addington Symonds, Havelock Karsch-Haack, and Elberskirchen—were homo‐ Ellis, and Edward Carpenter. These courageous sexual. Their subjective involvement played a cru‐ and democratically minded luminaries distin‐ cial role in their scholarship and emancipatory guished themselves from the elitist and conservat‐ outlook. ive—if not reactionary—defenders of the patri‐ Leck’s historical account of these sexual mod‐ archal and "heterosexist" status quo as well as of ernists appears to be inspired by a particular polit‐ bourgeois-capitalist hegemony (pp. 29, 68). These ical commitment as well. His intention, which he prejudiced villains include leading medical sexolo‐ almost formulates as a moral imperative for schol‐ gists such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Albert Moll, ars of sexuality, is clear: "any history of the sexual Albert Schrenck-Notzing, Albert Eulenburg, Paul science movement," he writes, "must delineate Mantegazza, Jean Martin Charcot, Valentin Mag‐ between those who described the protean sexual‐ nan, and Cesare Lombroso, who systematically de‐ ity found in human history as natural from those monized all irregular sexual behavior and fully who inserted a preemptory moral division supported "compulsory heterosexuality" (p. 29). between natural and unnatural sexuality into the According to Leck, the pioneering scholarship and study of sexual variance. Classificatory-epistemo‐ sexual politics of Ulrichs has been forgotten be‐ logical differences often correspond to political cause he was overshadowed and disregarded by differences" (p. 18). Leck claims that there is a fun‐ these mainstream sexologists, as well as by Sig‐ damental distinction between the medicalizing mund Freud. Whether Freud also belonged to the and stigmatizing science of psychopathia sexualis, conservative camp remains unclear, because Leck which affirmed the oppressive status quo, and does not discuss psychoanalysis in relation to critical scholarship that celebrated the free ex‐ sexual modernism. pression of sexual diversity. The objective of sexual modernism, as Leck Leck admits that modernist thought was not defines it, was the social and legal recognition of a without contradictions and that at the time it was variety of sexual desires and gender identities as still entangled with established notions of gender, natural and equal. Several strategies were em‐ sexuality, and politics. The intellectual elitism and ployed to advance this ideal: the introduction of political liberalism of Ulrichs, Kertbeny, and Sy‐ neologisms such as "urning" and "homosexual," monds did not include any consideration of class "dioning" and "heterosexual," sexual "intermediar‐ and feminist issues and, as Leck phrases it, "ten‐ ies," "third sex" and "psychosexual hermaphrodit‐ ded to perpetuate an exclusionary tradition of ism," all of which contributed to "a complete new civic fraternity" (p. 54). Also, modernist explana‐ epistemology of human sexuality" (p. 41); the re‐ tions of sexuality, in particular those of Ulrichs definition of nature in empirical, quantitative, and and Hirschfeld, hinged on biological determinism. inclusionary terms against the view of nature as a They adopted the dominant view of sexual desire normative standard implying the branding of de‐ as a magnetic attraction between male and female viance as unnatural; the framing of sexual rights opposites. Their conflation of sexual desire and as a fundamental sociopolitical issue and the link‐ 2 H-Net Reviews gender identity, which implied that a same-sex the argument that sexual diversity is rooted in preference was equated with gender inversion nature, because this would imply that enforced (homosexual men and women were supposedly and violent sexuality, including rape, sadism, in‐ born with a soul of the opposite sex), confirmed cest, and abuse of children, should also be en‐ gender stereotypes and the hierarchy of active dorsed. This radical view, expressed earlier by (masculine) and passive (effeminate) roles. The Marquis de Sade, was not maintained by Ulrichs model of sexuality as magnetism between and his followers. Moreover, employing a dis‐ gendered opposites barred an understanding of course of nature could prove to be counterpro‐ sexuality as an attraction between the like- ductive (as it also was), because the opponents of minded. This perspective complicated their de‐ sexual modernity used a similar naturalist rhetor‐ fense of homosexual rights, as pointed out by one ic in order to disqualify what they branded as "un‐ of the leading German medical authorities, Rudolf natural" sexualities. According to Kertbeny, the Virchow. Virchow, who corresponded with Ulrichs (un)naturalness of any sexual conduct was irrelev‐ and chaired a commission that advised the Prussi‐ ant for its legitimacy; the moral, legal, or social an government in 1869 to abolish the penalization validity of sexual acts could only be based on the of "unnatural" intercourse between men, criti‐ liberal definition of individual rights, including cized Ulrichs’s approach. According to Virchow, the need for mutual consent and the prevention of Ulrich's assumption that effeminate urnings were harm to others. Interestingly, Leck suggests that attracted to masculine "dionings" (heterosexuals), the arguments put forward by the heterosexual together with his claim that they were entitled to Kertbeny were part of his allegation that Ulrichs sexual gratification, implied that heterosexual was too subjective—in other words, the self-inter‐ men should engage in same-sex behavior and thus ested logic put forward by Ulrichs in his fight for act against their own inborn sexual nature. This legal equality was not necessarily the best one. perspective tended to confirm the widespread pre‐ The divergent perspectives and involvement of judice and fear that urnings would seduce hetero‐ these two protagonists also showed up in their dif‐ sexuals into homosexuality. ferent understanding of the essence of homosexu‐ One of the most problematic aspects of sexual ality: whereas Ulrichs defined it in terms of a men‐ modernism was its reliance on the moral author‐ tal and emotional constitution and gender iden‐ ity of naturalistic discourse, positing that a wide tity, Kertbeny prioritized physical impulse and variety of sexual behaviors should be accepted be‐ bodily contact. cause they are supposedly given in nature and Ulrichs’s (disputable) argument that natural therefore cannot be wrong. In fact this contention categories of sexual desire are given and fixed mimicked the age-old naturalistic fallacy, current served as a major tenet of the twentieth-century in both Christian doctrine and enlightened think‐ homosexual rights movement, even though time ing: the confusion of nature as empirical reality and again some of its leaders—who, I would sug‐ beyond good and evil and its definition as a moral gest, were more "modern" than those relying on standard and prescription for what is supposedly biological arguments—would articulate Kertbeny’s acceptable or not. The suggestion of Ulrichs and viewpoint. Although Leck acknowledges that nat‐ other sexual modernists up to Alfred Kinsey that uralization as an emancipatory strategy has its what is natural cannot be immoral, was disputed weak spots,
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